Live Letter Thoughts

[Hurlstone]

I know the forums are different, I even said as such in my post. I was pointing out how every other platform caters to pro-Venat people, while the forums are a more fair place for discussion. The person I was responding to said that it was difficult or 'daunting' to be pro-Venat on this platform. This is not the case, it is merely not as incredibly easy and popular to be pro-Venat here as you'll actually encounter people who don't share your opinions. The forums are what a social media community SHOULD be, but this person is accustomed to echo chambers and thus apparently finds the opposing opinions on the forums to be scary.

I am sorry but I feel I must defend myself a bit here and say that is... hippo crap? Forums would be a very boring place if we all just agreed on everything, especially when it comes to topics of lore and how we are effected by its story and themes. One of the beautiful things about fiction and art is how it can be interpreted and judged in different ways, be it for good or bad. I have found it very interesting to see why people do feel the way they do about Venat and Endwalkers themes, some of the opinions shown on this forum have even opened my eyes into flaws I did not see in my playthrough, though my mind has not be changed on its major points. Perhaps ‘daunting’ was the wrong word to use, and I am sorry. I did not mean to imply any victim hood. In this forum however, it just feels to me that over time… passive-aggressive retorts and accusations of ‘echo chambers’ in regards to those of us who do like the expansion/Venat have become a little more common then actually listening to opinions and debating said lore. Personally speaking it makes trying to engaging in such topics from the side the pendulum swings less feel a little… redundant somtimes.

[SentioftheHoukai]

So now reddit is not bad and is good for using as a source? Great, time to do some searching.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._somehow_than/
Here we have a thread about Endwalker being better than Shadowbringers with 92% upvotes and quite a few comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._much_as_most/
This one is about someone not enjoying Endwalker as much. Only 62% upvotes and under 80 comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...one_else_find/
Another person that finds Endwalker boring. 54% upvotes and 51 comments, most of them barely get any upvotes.

And just because I found them, two character polls (Japanese and chinese) after Endwalker

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...dom_character/

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...pularity_poll/

Quite a few of the scions are in the upper rankings, so they cant be that bad.

Yes, they can. Not liking Venat, the Scions or Endwalker gets you downvoted by the Reddit mob, more news at Eleven. This is not evidence, it's a "Gotcha."

I know the forums are different, I even said as such in my post. I was pointing out how every other platform caters to pro-Venat people, while the forums are a more fair place for discussion. The person I was responding to said that it was difficult or 'daunting' to be pro-Venat on this platform. This is not the case, it is merely not as incredibly easy and popular to be pro-Venat here as you'll actually encounter people who don't share your opinions. The forums are what a social media community SHOULD be (or at least far closer than anything else), but this person is accustomed to echo chambers and thus apparently finds the opposing opinions on the forums to be scary.

I did bring up one thing about the forums that makes it more difficult to be anti-Venat, but even with that in mind, I'd rather be posting here than on other sites.

On Reddit you can be downvoted, which hides what you have to say from the public eye and its far too easy to dogpile a dissenting opinion that may very well be valid. You can't do that here, which I suppose makes it fraught with peril to be a Venat supporter. My gods, the utter horror.

I am sorry but I feel I must defend myself a bit here and say that is... hippo crap? Forums would be a very boring place if we all just agreed on everything, especially when it comes to topics of lore and how we are effected by its story and themes. One of the beautiful things about fiction and art is how it can be interpreted and judged in different ways, be it for good or bad. I have found it very interesting to see why people do feel the way they do about Venat and Endwalkers themes, some of the opinions shown on this forum have even opened my eyes into flaws I did not see in my playthrough, though my mind has not be changed on its major points. Perhaps ‘daunting’ was the wrong word to use, and I am sorry. I did not mean to imply any victim hood. In this forum however, it just feels to me that over time… passive-aggressive retorts and accusations of ‘echo chambers’ in regards to those of us who do like the expansion/Venat have become a little more common then actually listening to opinions and debating said lore. Personally speaking it makes trying to engaging in such topics from the side the pendulum swings less feel a little… redundant somtimes.

See what I said in my response to Awesome above. Reddit operates so that dissenting opinions are easy to obfuscate and shove neatly out of view. You can't do that here, which I guess makes it difficult to be a Venat supporter. Somehow. You ask me, the way this forum operates is how forums should operate and I cannot comprehend the reasoning behind any complaints on allowing us who have issues with Endwalker and its message to freely express our views without being downvote bombed. Point is, the way other forums and social media operate are unhealthy and antagonistic.

I'm not gleefully rubbing my hands together at your discomfort like some Saturday morning cartoon villain, if that makes you feel any better. I just want to be able to express what I think without it disappearing into the aether like it does on Reddit.

[AwesomeJr44]

Forums would be a very boring place if we all just agreed on everything ... One of the beautiful things about fiction and art is how it can be interpreted and judged in different ways, be it for good or bad.

We don't disagree on this. That is why the official forums is far better than the echo chambers like r/ffxiv where one type of opinion is valued while the other is outcast. You're not going to get both interpretations on other sites.

Perhaps ‘daunting’ was the wrong word to use, and I am sorry. I did not mean to imply any victim hood.

I'm inclined to agree that daunting perhaps wasn't the word you were looking for, considering the contents of your newer comment.

In this forum however, it just feels to me that over time… passive-aggressive retorts and accusations of ‘echo chambers’ in regards to those of us who do like the expansion/Venat have become a little more common then actually listening to opinions and debating said lore.

That point about echo chambers is brought up a lot because its very true. The FFXIV community (at least the portion that exists on social media) as a whole is very aggressive in suppressing anything seen as 'negative'. The same is true on the forums, and while the derail squad can't actually succeed in suppressing any threads like they can on Reddit, they still are not here for good faith discussion, they're here to shut discussion down. When people like Atelier or Silverbane show up in Aveyond's threads, they're not here because they like the topic or find it interesting. They're here to distract everyone from having a meaningful conversation. When Aveyond made a thread about how the new guide videos were bad for FFXIV's image, Atelier came into the thread and said that the thread was worthless and that no one should care about this topic. Does this contribute to a discussion? No, it discourages people from engaging in it by labeling it as pointless, and that's their goal. People like me or Aveyond bring it up a lot because it occurs a LOT.

As for the reason why only the one side of the argument ever refers to echo chambers, well that one's easy. All of the big social media communities outside of the forums sway in one particular direction. There really isn't a place to go for an anti-Endwalker or anti-Venat echo chamber, thus the argument doesn't work against an anti-Endwalker person.

Personally speaking it makes trying to engaging in such topics from the side the pendulum swings less feel a little… redundant somtimes.

Well that's the thing. It IS redundant. Every time someone like Aveyond makes a thread, the same exact people come into the thread to derail it before anyone can talk about something that might be 'negative'. They chase anyone who might have wanted to discuss things away from the thread and the same conversation resumes every time. It's exhausting, and I'll be full glad to have a good discussion when the derail squad calls it quits and lets people discuss what they want.

[SentioftheHoukai]

Herein lies a big part of the problem; we're not on any other platform. The victim play about how you all get downvoted to oblivion elsewhere is meaningless here. If we really cared what Reddit or Twitter or wherever else thought, we'd go there. Maybe save your anger for them, and try approaching the forums as its own place.

And before it comes up: I'm not very pro-Venat. I'm neutral about her at best. I want to play through Endwalker again for better context (I was kinda rushing the first time to outpace spoilers, and still only met with moderate success at it), but I keep getting distracted by other stuff, so I try to keep my thoughts about the matter to myself.

Don't forget to state how this is your opinion alone and how you can only speak for yourself. You wouldn't want anyone to think you were speaking for the majority, would you? Surely, you would protect yourself from being seen as engaging in the type of bad faith cajolery that vile Zodiark cult is known to practice.

[AwesomeJr44]

Don't forget to state how this is your opinion alone and how you can only speak for yourself. You wouldn't want anyone to think you were speaking for the majority, would you? Surely, you would protect yourself from being seen as engaging in the type of bad faith cajolery that vile Zodiark cult is known to practice.

Oh dang! You're right! Wow MightyMollusk, and here I thought you were a champion of truth, always making sure that everyone clarifies when they're sharing an opinion or a fact! But here you are, sharing an opinion and not stating as such! Shame on you MightyMollusk! SHAME!!!

[TheMightyMollusk]

As long as y'all are having fun.

[Semirhage]

Good god, the Emet fanclub is still raging about that evil wicked vile hateful witch Venat and her murderous evil horrible nastiness that must be SHAME SHAME SHAMED verbally in the MSQ otherwise this is the worst story in the entire universe because we didn't spend 4 hours talking about how duplicitous and horrible and genocidal and awful and mean and stinky and disgusting and wretched that awful backstabbing hag Venat killed the beautiful perfect Amaurotine race through her pettiness and laziness?

I must be on the FF14 forums.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Good god, the Emet fanclub is still raging about that evil wicked vile hateful witch Venat and her murderous evil horrible nastiness that must be SHAME SHAME SHAMED verbally in the MSQ otherwise this is the worst story in the entire universe because we didn't spend 4 hours talking about how duplicitous and horrible and genocidal and awful and mean and stinky and disgusting and wretched that awful backstabbing hag Venat killed the beautiful perfect Amaurotine race through her pettiness and laziness?

I must be on the FF14 forums.

After a careful Analyses...this checks out

[AwesomeJr44]

Good god, the Emet fanclub is still raging about that evil wicked vile hateful witch Venat and her murderous evil horrible nastiness that must be SHAME SHAME SHAMED verbally in the MSQ otherwise this is the worst story in the entire universe because we didn't spend 4 hours talking about how duplicitous and horrible and genocidal and awful and mean and stinky and disgusting and wretched that awful backstabbing hag Venat killed the beautiful perfect Amaurotine race through her pettiness and laziness?

I must be on the FF14 forums.

More like some people recognize that committing genocide is an act of great evil, even if done with good intent (which whether she had good intent or not is honestly debatable if we look at what the story shows and not tells as the two contradict). They also recognize that when you make a story about such a horrible crime, you have to be careful not to glorify that action. The game doesn't do a good job at treating it with the care a topic like genocide needs as the scions, especially Y'shtola bend over backwards to make sure that everyone knows shes a good person for killing a planet's worth of people. Then the Venat enjoyers got mad that someone dare not love their mommy as much as they do, so they decided to form the derail brigade in an attempt to derail any thread that isn't to their liking. And btw, a Venat fan is the one who brought up the topic of Venat in this thread sweetie

So yes, you are on the FF14 forums. Welcome to the land of spiteful Venat enjoyers who insist that everyone like an unlikable murderer.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

So yes, you are on the FF14 forums. Welcome to the land of spiteful Venat enjoyers who insist that everyone like an unlikable murderer.

All Im seeing is a Venat hater who needs everyone to know they hate Venat so much and will go at people who do like her.